Editorial: School choice is expanding across U.S.

2013-01-29 16:41:17

All of us can choose from among dozens of brands of automobiles. But when it comes to something more precious, parents generally have little choice in their children's public schools. The educational bureaucracy makes the decision.

The outlook is improving, as we're reminded during National School Choice Week, which runs through Saturday, Feb. 2. Programs continue advancing that give parents and students alternatives to remaining in underperforming or unsafe schools.

School choice first was advanced in 1955 by one of our favorite economists, the late Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate who long was associated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His work now is carried forward by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in Indianapolis.

It its purest form, school choice involves providing a "voucher" or "tax credit scholarship" to parents, who then can "spend" it at any school, public or private.

"It puts the focus of public education on those who matter most: the students," Jeff Reed told us; he's the communications director at the foundation. "Friedman said we should fund education, not schools. Parents should choose schools, not the other way." Mr. Reed said school choice motivates schools to compete for students.

The first school choice experiments began two decades ago, prompted by the often-horrible situation for inner-city children in Milwaukee and Cleveland. The results have been impressive. Of 11 studies that used a random assignment of students, Mr. Reed said, 10 showed improvements; one study showed no effect. None found a decline in achievement.

He added that traditional public schools also improved their performance as they were forced to do better to avoid losing students to private schools.

About 255,000 children in the United States are using school-choice vouchers. Unfortunately, none is in California. In 1993, voters defeated a school voucher initiative, Proposition 174, by 70 percent to 30 percent. In 2000, a similar initiative, Prop. 38, lost 71 percent to 29 percent. In both cases, the well-funded opposition of the teachers' unions was just too powerful. If anything, those unions are even more powerful today, as their clout at last November's polls showed.

However, California does have limited school choice through charter schools, which work within the public-school system but enjoy more autonomy. And the state's recent "parent trigger" law, in which parents can force reforms, even replace the administration at an underperforming school, is just being implemented.

So the fight to expand educational options in California isn't over. Friedman's school choice idea remains a beacon of reform.